


where there's no end or need for goodbyes

by buckyjerkbarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (yep you heard right), Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Steve Rogers, Brief mention of period typical homophobia, Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers deserve a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Post-World War I, Steve gets hurt after washing up on Bucky's island, brief depiction of how Bucky lost his arm, castaway steve, hand holding, how will they survive, issa me I'm the queen, just enough not to be unrealistic, just throwing it out there that Bucky is v oblivious, lighthouse keeper bucky, mentions of war and injury, oh no, slight slow burn but not too slow, there's a dog, we love a competent queen, where only Bucky lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-08 23:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyjerkbarnes/pseuds/buckyjerkbarnes
Summary: Bucky was guided to the southern side of the island, where the terrain was the rockiest, thus the slickest post-rain. He hurried over puddles and felt his frown grow deeper and deeper the closer to the shoreline they went and then thick tufts of wild grass gave way to boulders and whispering, lapping sea to reveal—A man.[Bucky is a lighthouse keeper post-WWI and, after a storm seems to crack open the sky, finds Steve Rogers has washed up on his shore.]





	1. the tempest

**Author's Note:**

> So I was leaving a friend's house the day before Thanksgiving and ended up going for a night drive. I went over a bridge and spotted a searchlight and I squinted in the dark and wondered if there was a lighthouse my dumbass had never noticed before. My brain made the jump from who ran this imaginary lighthouse to Steve/Bucky and here we are. It should also be noted that chapter count is liable to shrink or grow as this story develops as this is just a rough estimate.
> 
> Also the location this takes place is loosely based on Mount Desert Island in Maine. If you've never seen a picture, holy shit google it right now it's beautiful. Enjoy!

_1922._

 

James Barnes used to be a people person. Folks in his neighborhood loved him, wanted him to date their daughters because he was an upstanding citizen, oozing charisma and poise. God, he used to love his mother's dinner parties, loved dazzling the guests by playing the piano and flashing white, even smiles. He loved dressing up in fine suits, hair neatly maintained, face smooth with a clean shave. He used to be a charmer, used to have a multitude of friends,but that was a time so long ago, so out of reach, sometimes he's not quite sure that part of himself existed at all.

That was before the war. (Before he knew what the reek of body odor and dirt and blood and explosives did to one's nose. Before he knew how dangerous trench foot could be. Before he knew what someones innards looked like draped along their pelvis and knees like the world's most grotesque Christmas garland.)

That was before he lost his left arm. (Before the hospital. Before he learned what _phantom pain_ was. Before he had to relearn how to live life with only one arm, which not a word of his private school education could've prepared him for.)

That was before his little sister was claimed by the Spanish flu. (Before he watched the color drain from Rebecca's cheeks, her skin going blue like she'd been left in the snow. Before he learned to keep his face from breaking into a million pieces each time she coughed up frothy, blood-tinged substance out of her lungs. Before dark spots rose and clustered all over her face, like a taunting parody of acne she would never grow old enough to get. Before she looked at him straight in the face with eyes a carbon copy of his own and whispered _I'm really tired, Bucky_ and he told her, heart breaking and splintering the pulp of his body cavity, _S'all right. S'all right, Bec. You get some sleep, okay? I'll be here when you wake up._ And then— And then—)

He blinked hard, shuddering against the cold wind.

That was before his oldest companion spotted that he was in dire need of an out and slipped him a posting for a new lighthouse keeper.

"It doesn't have to be a permanent thing," Natasha murmured, her hair red as rouge and pulled away from her face with a series of pearl embellished pins. They'd been bosom buddies, had ran in the same social circles from the time they could walk. He loved her like a sister and was fairly sure she loved him just the same. "You are clearly not okay and it looks like I'm the only one with the guts to say as much. Being around people who are constantly asking after your health is detrimental, James. Take some time away, steady yourself. All you have to do is make sure the bulb in the watch tower doesn't burn out, plus you have a place to stay and are getting well-paid."

"Doesn't sound so bad, eh?" Clint encouraged, his hand giving Nat's a tender squeeze.

He and Bucky had both been stationed in France, had been in the same regiment. Bucky'd gripped at him, mouth moving on auto-pilot to infuse the air with hollow comforts when Pietro was shot and died on the battlefield, had wrestled him to the ground when Clint tried to scramble up the side of the trench to rip the throat out of the Kraut who killed his cousin. He'd followed Bucky back to Maine, had quite literally tripped over himself when Natasha met them at the docks. He'd never seen _cat who caught the canary_ personified until then, the glint in Nat's eyes unmistakable.

Not five months later, the pair were engaged. He was happy they were happy and that was a complete truth.

"No," Bucky admitted quietly, carefully folding the posting into a square he'd read at least half a dozen times before settling on contacting the retiring keeper. “No, it doesn’t.”

In a week's time, he'd packed a bag and had prepared to go seven and a half miles away from the shore, to an island where it would just be him and the wildlife, the lighthouse and the sea. Until the old keeper met him with a white and brown dog with the sweetest god damn face he'd ever seen.

"I need you to take her," the man said, gruff and grizzled. His skin was leather-like, eyes as green as sea glass. He must be in his sixties or seventies with all that white in hair and the liver spots dotting the backs of his hands.

"Sir," Bucky murmured softly. "With all due respect, I can barely take care of myself, much less a dog. Why can't you—?"

"I'm old, son. And Molly, here, s'been a good companion for the last two years, yes you have m'girl," the man's words softened around the edges, his pup's tail thumping against the wooden boards of the dock as if she knew she was being directly addressed. "But the isle can get lonely. She'll be wonderful company, follow you wherever you go."

And the whole time, the dog had been staring at Bucky with huge, baleful eyes. Big and brown. She was an Irish Red and White Setter, he believed, though his mother had never allowed pets, he'd always wanted a dog. So had Becca.

"Alright," he allowed, throat tight. "Alright, I'll take her."

As he’d said: Bucky used to be a people person.

Now, though, he much preferred Molly’s quiet puttering and the squabbling of gulls.

*

He’d been home from the war for about four years, as he was injured in February of eighteen and left the hospital outside of Versailles in late April. By November, Becca was gone and by the following July, he was so deep in a depression, only Nat’s persistence and Clint’s steadying presence could tug him above the surface. He’d been on Violet Island for two years and then some and he didn’t think he’d like it as much as he did.

To be frank, Bucky adored it.

It wasn’t exactly a light-weight job. He had to be a mechanic, a sailor, and a construction worker all wrapped up into one exhausted body, but the fatigue made him feel like he was being put to good use. That he was doing more than just wallowing in the shadowed halls of his own head day in and day out.

His quarters were modest, a sharp contrast to the large home he was raised in— there was a full bed, a dresser, an oil lamp and a small, small hearth he had to stoke four or five times a night to ensure the fire didn’t die out and leave him cold by dawn. There was a bathroom with a tin tub, a single sink, and a toilet, the floors white and black checkerboard tile. He had a sitting room with two chairs and a couch, a kitchen he’d painted butter yellow because that was the first room the sun illuminated in the morning and he liked to drink his coffee bathed in golden light.

Molly had a basket of toys— an old teddy bear, a ball, a few rope things he’d managed to braid and tie off for her to tug and swing around to her heart’s content. She slept at the foot of his mattress most nights and if she didn’t, she was on the rug beside the bed. He really adored the dog. She didn’t ask questions, didn’t ask if he was alright, and if he happened to be ass over ears into a nightmare, she’d wake him with a cold nose bumping concernedly at his face until he stirred and rubbed behind her soft, soft ears.

The old man had been right: the isle did get lonely and without her, he would’ve not-so quietly sank into himself.

*

The storm came out of nowhere.

Bucky had been down at the boathouse, retrieving a few extra logs of wood to make it through the night and before he knew it, rain came pounding furious and loud against the roof. He nearly slipped and sent the wood flying, but he managed to regain his footing as he ran back to the light station. Molly was already inside, thankfully, soaked to the bone and whining. He didn’t have time to towel her off, hurrying up the winding staircase to his post.

Thankfully, no windows had been broken, though one had blown open harshly against the howling wind and soaked his radio. He made a mad dash to close it, nearly braining his head on the railing slip-sliding on the water that had amassed in the last few minutes. Bucky shouldered the window shut, latching it and glanced behind himself. The Fresnel lens was freshly polished and the kerosene lamp was lit for the evening, a strobe of light dancing in circuits, around and around. He squinted past the rain, the sudden roll of cumulonimbus clouds like something out of the Old Testament.

As far as he was aware, no ships were meant to be out. There was nothing over the radio, either, which he took as a good sign. Stark and his apprentice, Peter, did deliveries during the day, for the most part, and the Howlies had gone towards the Carolinas for soft shell crabs. He hoped Thor had returned from his trip to Nova Scotia and if he hadn’t, that he’d tapped into his eerily weather-savvy instincts and decided to wait out the tempest. 

He shook himself, jotting down the forecast in his log book.

Bucky did dry Molly off, stripping out his own drenched clothes and into a thick beige cable-knit sweater. He tucked his hair behind his ears, thinking fleetingly that he needed a trim, and settled in with a thermos of coffee for a long night ahead.

*

With the dawn, there came quiet. Pale pinks and peaches, like a child had dropped their sorbet and the colors were smeared across the sky. He let Molly out to do her business, his boots making sucking noises as the mud made to tug him into the earth.

It was a slow process, doing his rounds. The dodgy door to the boathouse had flown open, leaving everything inside disordered and messy. The walkway up to the light station was covered with leaves and tree limbs and it would take him too damn long to clean up. His posting was nocturnal and while he only slept about five or six hours on a good day, he doubted he’d be able to scrounge up more than three.

He sighed, rubbing a hand over the light stubble at his jaw.

Molly came running toward him, ears slick against her skull. “Hey,” he murmured, stooping to her level. “Hey, what is it?”

She took his wrist gently in her jowls, tugging him in the direction which she’d just come. His brows tugged together, but he followed nonetheless.

He was guided to the southern side of the island, where the terrain was the rockiest, thus the most slick post-rain. He hurried over puddles and felt his frown grow deeper and deeper the closer to the shoreline they went and then thick tufts of wild grass gave way to boulders and whispering, lapping sea to reveal—

A man.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Bucky whispered, patting Molly’s rump with a muttered _good girl_ as he stumbled down the incline to reach what he hoped wasn’t a corpse. “Oh, fuck, please don’t be dead.” 

He lowered himself to his knees, hesitating. Who knew how long the poor fellow had been exposed to the elements, his clothes pressing wetly to his broad shoulders, his narrow hips. The man was curled on his side, still and pale and more than a little ruffled. He was blond, long-limbed, and— Bucky had to control his expression while he thought as much— as beautiful as the demigods painted by Renaissance men.

Touching two fingers beneath that sharp jaw, light then purposeful with his pressure, Bucky felt the faintest thump of a pulse. Okay. Okay, Bucky could work with that. Further prodding down the man’s form— over ribs, legs, feet, ankles, wrists. He faltered at the man’s right arm.

Bucky had never sustained such an injury himself, but he knew what a broken bone looked like.

Bad to worse.

Molly nosed at the man, licking his forehead. The motion drew Bucky’s attention down to the silver chain at his neck. A hooked finger had the necklace pooling partially into Bucky’s palm, tugging a pair of dog tags with it.

Rogers, Steven Grant. Captain. Catholic. His serial was a string of numbers Bucky didn’t process, tucking the tags back under Roger’s collar and carefully standing. He needed to be quick and efficient and Bucky found he was working through a bulleted list of self-imposed orders: get the arm splinted, get Rogers to the lighthouse, get him under a ton of blankets to raise his body temperature. Find the time to sleep, himself, before night came and he had to return to his post.

“Molls,” Bucky said, pointing a finger at his little lady. “Stay. If he wakes up and sees you, he’ll hopefully know that someone’s coming back for him.”

Molly harrumphed as she laid down at Roger’s side, her muzzle resting on the man’s hip.

He turned, preparing for a long, long day ahead.


	2. fireside chats

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky was no medic. He’d seen his fair share of surgeries in the field hospitals, gripped enough hands, told too many young men they’d be going home soon, that they’d see their Ma’s just as fast, but Roger’s conditions wasn’t as severe as any of those cases.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whaaaaaat? A second post? In one day? Who am I? 
> 
> (Someone with no self-control to wait until next Saturday to post lmao)
> 
> Thank you kindly for the positive response for the first chapter of this fic! I really appreciate it! Enjoy!

Bucky was no medic. He’d seen his fair share of surgeries in the field hospitals, gripped enough hands, told too many young men they’d be going home soon, that they’d see their Ma’sjust as fast, but Roger’s conditions wasn’t as severe as any of those cases. He did a decent job at splinting Roger’s arm until Bucky could get him out the cold. December this far north was already bitter. The water-logged clothes were doing Rogers exactly zero favors.

He loaded Rogers up in a dingy, something Bucky had piled with a pillow and several towels for makeshift bedding. The only reason he didn’t throw the man over his shoulder was Bucky didn’t wish to injure him further incase of a fall, which came close to happening more than once even with Bucky’s careful navigation of the ground.

It took an hour of lugging Roger’s to reach the light station, another ten minutes to gingerly maneuver him through the front entrance and onto the couch where his head lolled and his body, solid and complete deadweight against Bucky’s side, sank into the cushions.

“Christ,” he said, breathless as he guided Roger’s head onto a new pillow so he wouldn’t wake with a cricked neck. “What did your Ma feed you?”

Logs were thrown into the fire in the living space, Bucky changing Rogers out of his clothes with a mechanical efficiency of one of the stern-faced nurses in the trenches. He barely fit in Bucky’s clothes with the way his body was so packed with muscle, something Bucky would likely spend an excessive time unpacking later, when Rogers was awake and talking and hopefully relatively grateful for Bucky’s help.

Molly stood guard while Bucky threw together a bit of broth from dinner the previous night, breaking off a nub of bread and halving it with her. She chewed appreciatively, tongue lolling momentarily before she drifted back to Roger's side and started up with her wining again.

"Take it easy, mother hen," Bucky soothed, bending to pat her head and cracking a smile when she leaned into his hand. He was torn between going to his room to try get as much rest as he could and the discomfort that rose in him at abandoning the unconscious man. What if Rogers woke with a condition far worse than any physical signs suggested? What if he woke and happened to be an axe murderer that Bucky just so happened to spread over his sofa? He didn't think it was the case, despite what the niggling voices in his head tried to suggest. They all sounded like his Ma, overly concerned, pitching forth too many far-fetched fancies to be plausible.

He took a middle path by pushing two chairs together and grabbing the pillow off his bed, wrapping himself up in a blanket across the room. Between the distance Bucky had put between himself and the other man, Molly curled up at Rogers' side, and the warm sunshine filtering in through the round windows, there were far worse environments to wake in.

The waking, in fact, did not come until Bucky had secured four and a half hours sleep and the alarm clock he kept at his bedside began to ring from down the hall. He startled, feet hitting the floor with a couple of twin thumps that sent Rogers stirring. Molly sat up, tail thumping against the rug as she pressed her muzzle into Roger's chin, causing him to jerk at her intrusive, cold nose. Rogers didn't push her away. Instead, the arm that was not bandaged rose from under the blanket Bucky had covered him with to curl to Molly's skull. His strong brow furrowed, as if he didn't know what to make of the sensation of fur under his palm.

"You're alright," Bucky assured, pitching his voice low so as not to startle.

Rogers made quite the valiant attempt at blinking his eyes open. Squinted. Clenched his eyelids hard, brow creasing further. "Where...," he began hoarsely, coughing twice to shake the rust from his throat. "Where am I?"

"Violet Island."

A nod, small and jerky like he took Bucky’s word. ”There… I was painting," Rogers said slowly, voice low and rumbling. He still hadn't opened his eyes. "I was painting and this storm just came out of nowhere."

Bucky made his footsteps distinct enough that if Rogers was at least half cognizant, he'd be able to track Bucky's movement with ease. "My dog found you washed up on the bluffs this morning. I, ah, carried you back to my home. Patched you up—," Rogers hissed, as if the pain of his broken bone just came under his notice, shooting off white-hot sparks along his nerve endings. "—to the best of my ability."

Rogers made to set up, groaning before his back could fully make it off the sofa. Bucky touched at his chest, just light pressure from his fingertips: “I wouldn’t advise that.”

“Thanks for the memo,” Rogers mumbled and though the words had plenty of opportunity to sting, they held no ill-wishes in them. “Violet Island, you said? That’s where we are?”

“Mhm.”

“That’s… what? Four miles out from shore?”

Correcting him with a murmured _seven and a quarter miles_ , actually, Bucky moved to the stove to pour out a helping of broth and filled a glass with water so Rogers might dampen his palette and not struggle to speak so much. Given he didn't wish to risk a failed balancing act, Bucky left the broth steaming on the counter, offering the water first.

“Here,” Bucky said, hooking his foot around the legs of the nearest chair and tugging it up to his liking. “Drink this.”

Eyes fluttering fully open for the first time, Bucky was struck by the fact that Rogers had the bluest eyes he’d ever had the good fortune to see. A thick fringe of lashes, too. Full mouth. An endearing dent in the bridge of his nose, like he’d broken it in one too many fights and the bone had never healed correctly.Bucky shook himself, playing the motion off as if he were rolling his shoulders trying to shake away an ache in his back from curling up in an uncomfortable position.

“Thanks,” Rogers said softly, his good hand rising to the glass as Bucky held it to his lips, warm fingers brushing the ridges of Bucky’s knuckles.

He sank back in his chair, watching Rogers with a raised brow. "How's your head?"

That earned him an unimpressed grimace. "About as good as you'd expect," Rogers said, and that accent... that was something Bucky knew in his bones.

"You from Brooklyn?"

Steve perked, too. Well, as much as he could when the matter between his ears was swimming and his arm probably hurt like hell if he so much as considered shifting his weight. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. You?"

"Yeah," Bucky told him, letting Rogers polish off the glass of water. "Lived there until I was sixteen before my father got a job with some fat cat oil tycoon and moved my family to Maine. I've, ah. I've lived here on Violet Isle from around the time the war ended."

Steve could only keep his eyes open for short increments. This was an increment loaded with blue, lined by incredulity. "Alone?"

"Nah. I have my best girl." At that endearment, Molly sat up from where she'd curled at the foot of the couch, one of her flopping ears laying wonky on her skull. Bucky set the empty water glass aside to reach out and gently right it, smoothing his fingers through her fur. "I'm the lighthouse keeper, if you couldn't guess."

Rogers blinked. "We're inside a lighthouse?”

"No, pal, it's the Plaza," Bucky retorted, wry. "Can't you tell from the fine decor? The wait-staff is phenomenal, don't you know." He nodded over at Molly, who, at the signs of movement among her human companions, had gone to retrieve her beloved teddy bear that had surrendered an ear and eye to her chewing long, long ago.

"Ha-ha," Rogers deadpanned. "It just doesn't look like it, is all."

"Ah, I'm just giving you a hard time," he smiled, returning to the kitchen to retrieve the broth. He settled back in, Molly flopping down with a _harrumph_ that made Roger's smile, a dopey, endearing thing. "Besides, I'm not sure my back would've liked it if I'd dragged you all the way up in keeper's nest just so it'd be real obvious you were, in fact, in a lighthouse." Bucky dunked the spoon into the broth, the bowl precariously balanced on his lap. "You've got to be starving."

At the implied prospect of being spoon-fed, Rogers made to sit up again, a hiss of pain shooting through his teeth before he could stamp it down. Bucky had to practically make like a lightning strike and bolt to keep Rogers from moving, the spoon and bowl quickly finding a place on little table beside the arm of the couch. He flattened his hand to Roger’s chest— _firm, muscle, warmth_ sank into his skin— and felt the man’s heart pick up in pace.

“I can eat,” Rogers protested and though he’d only pushed himself into a forty-five degree angle, his biceps were trembling with the effort to remain upright. It took the slightest increase of pressure from Bucky and he was curling into the cushions, stubbornly resigned.

"Will it really be that big a hit to your pride if I help you eat?"

Roger's grimace slackened into something akin to a pout, immediately making the right corner of Bucky's mouth twitch, fighting a smirk. Hedging further, Bucky murmured: "It won't hurt to accept a little help."

Softly, as if thrown, Rogers admitted: ”I think my Ma's said those exact words before."

"Well, your Ma must be a smart lady, then," Bucky said, plucking up and returning the bowl to his lap. He had to clench his thighs to keep them from moving, from letting the hot soup spill all over his trousers and making a fool of himself in the first company he’d had since Clint and Natasha visited some two and a half weeks previous.

Rogers didn’t say anything to that and Bucky could only assume the worst, especially when he shifted into a position to make it easier for Bucky to navigate the spoon to and from his mouth. He groaned at the first taste of the broth, at the salt and the chicken stock and finely chopped carrots Bucky had managed to dice without giving the appearance of absolutely mauling the vegetable.

“S’good,” Rogers told him, nodding in silent thanks. “Maybe…ha. Maybe this is the Plaza, after all.”

Bucky snorted, a sound the complete opposite of delicate, and his cheeks pinked when Roger’s eyes brightened as he offered a half-smile.

“I—,” Rogers began. “You never told me your name.”

Oh, he could feel the phantom slap of his mother’s hand at the base of his head. He said as much aloud, delighting, perhaps, more than he ought to at the chuckle that fell from Roger’s throat. “James Barnes,” Bucky said. “Though, most people call me Bucky—,” and, before Rogers could wonder why that was, he explained: “My middle name’s Buchanan.”

Rogers' brows steepled. “James Buchanan, huh.”

Not a question, merely an observation.

“My mother loved history,” Bucky told him, bringing the bowl to Roger’s mouth to let him better drain the final dregs. He gave a brief slurp at the substance, smacking his lips involuntarily, satisfied. Something in Bucky brightened. “Thought she was being clever by naming me after one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had.”

“It’s a good name,” Rogers mused. “Better than Steve, I suppose.”

Because he didn’t wish to admit that he knew full well what Roger’s name already was, that he had practically memorized everything on the other man’s dog tags besides his serial, Bucky pressed: “You’re just called Steve?”

Now it was Roger's turn to look embarrassed for withholding information. “Rogers. Steve Rogers.”

“Good to meet you, Steve Rogers,” Bucky assured him, returning the smile he received with one of his own. Christ above, even weather-beaten and plucked out of the sea, Rogers had one of the most sincere visages Bucky had ever seen on a grown man. A whine from around his ankles brought both of their attentions downward. “And it’s good to know you, too, Miss Molly.”

They maintained the same easy dialogue for some ten minutes when Bucky noticed the sun had very nearly disappeared, leaving the room shadowed and the crackling fire in the hearth the only source of light. He rose to run some water in the empty bowl, frowning slightly when Rogers shifted pointedly, once, twice, and even a third time before Bucky had returned to sit with him.

“You got the jitters?”

"I've, ah, actually gotta piss real bad," Rogers admitted sheepishly, candid, to which Bucky couldn't help but let out a laugh at.

“You gonna let me help you get there or are you going to suffer in silence?"

Rogers shot him a look that was likely meant to be withering but only made Bucky laugh harder.

"Oh, alright," Rogers muttered, letting Bucky slip an arm around his middle and heave him to his feet. He swayed, bumping his temple into Bucky's without meaning to as he breathed sharply through his nose. The vertigo took a long, wavering moment to pass, leaving Rogers gasping, eyes clenching closed.

“We’ll take it slow, then,” he said lightly, tightening the grip he had on the back of Rogers’ borrowed shirt. “S’not like I have anywhere else to be.”

It was a slow trip, though Molly didn’t try to weave between them or knock into the bends of Roger’s knees to floor him, something Bucky tried to count as a plus. He kicked the door open with his dominant leg, thanking his lucky stars that Tony had wired up his little home with electric light so Rogers didn’t have to do his business in the dark.

“I’ll radio the mainland,” Bucky said, watching to make sure Rogers had the balance to stand upright in the washroom. Walking him was one thing— Bucky had no doubt about the severity of Roger’s protest if Bucky tried to stay while he undid his pants, while he pulled out his member to— “See if there’s anyone that can come and get you the proper medical attenti— Molly, no.”

He couldn’t help but laugh, ignoring the nervous edge to the sound, as his faithful companion made a valiant attempt to slip inside with Rogers, panting happily at all the movement around her home. Bucky caught her by the ribs, giving her sides a rub to distract her from fulfilling her task. “Let the man do his thing in peace.”

Steve chuckled, too, succumbing to Molly’s demeanor and giving her a rub behind her ears as he let the door slip shut.

“What’s the matter with you, huh?” Bucky asked his beloved mutt, ruffling the thick fur at her neck and smacking a kiss to the round of her skull. “I know you’ve got better manners than that.”

He didn’t think he imagined Steve’s continued mirth bouncing off the narrow walls of the bathroom.

Bucky didn’t loiter any longer, heading up the spiral staircase to the light keeper’s perch, crossing to the northside and sliding on the headset in one fluid motion. He plucked up the mouthpiece, pressing the button the side as he spoke: “This is James Barnes on Violet Isle requesting medical assistance—”

The words in his throat died swiftly. There wasn’t so much as a whisper of static on the other end of the line. Just silence. He held down on the button once more, released it. Nothing. Bucky, a surge of panic rising from around his belly button to hook in his esophagus, made to reconnect the headset and the mouthpiece, both, tinkering with their individual cables, ensuring everything was as it ought to be. 

At his left, the window creaked open in the twilight breeze.

“Son of a bitch,” he swore. Bucky had forgotten about the radio, about the water-damage it had sustained the night previous. He pitched himself down the stairs for a towel, sprinting up to try in vain to dry dials and the mouthpiece and even had a go at tuning it with no luck at all. With more infliction: “Son of a _bitch_!”

“What’s wrong?” came from down below. He stilled, pinching at the bridge of his nose.

“Technical difficulties.”

Just so it could be seen that Bucky wasn’t some psychopath trying to hold him captive, he helped Rogers up the spiral staircase to try the radio.

“You know anything about fixing this?”

Rogers looked equally perplexed, the only relief he appeared to feel was at least the radio wasn’t destroyed outwardly, its wire intestines intact rather than hanging out its sides. He reached out to turn a knob only to rear back into Bucky's side when the dial sparked. “Not a thing, no.”

Steadying him, Bucky slanted Rogers a look the same time the blond glanced his way. He ignored how his breath hitched at the sight— all those sharp angles, that _face_ , so sincere— and gave Rogers a pat on the arm. He told him: “Well, pal, until Stark comes around with the supplies next week, I’m afraid you’re stuck here.”

(There was nothing in his tone to suggest he was remotely put-out by the notion.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh no they're trapped on an island together all alone whatever will they do? FALL IN LOVE OF COURSE
> 
> as implied by that, the next chapter will definitely pick up! stay tuned, x!
> 
> Note: chap 3 is already written and will be posted this Saturday (1/15)!


	3. ebb, flow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve and Bucky get closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried posting this but it wasn't showing up in the ao3 listings so??? Here's a repost! Enjoy!

It was odd, having another person on the isle. Bucky had visitors on occasion, sure, and he was attuned to Molly's four-legged puttering at all hours after being in her company for so long, but Rogers took a bit of getting used to. 

Despite recovering from his tumultuous arrival, Rogers refused to take Bucky's bed when he'd offered it up and he slept on the sofa, instead. He quite literally planted himself on the central cushion and refused to move, said he was already putting Bucky out enough as it was, that he refused to boot him from his own bed. Every instinct ingrained in his body from years of polite schmoozing among the relative high-society screamed that he had to keep stamping on the generosity pedal until that particular engine fizzled out, but it was a useless fight.

Bucky would admit it was pretty endearing (and equally frustrating) to see that determined set to Roger’s jaw, how it gave way to a pleased grin when he realized Bucky was conceding.

By being in the living space, Bucky had full sight Rogers as he slept: sleep was a private thing, so he did his best not to stare or stop in the doorway to ensure that chest was still lifting and falling with steady breath. Sleeping left all your vulnerable parts exposed to the world. It was too intimate. Bucky couldn’t miss how Rogers would curl into himself, something just a glance permitted him to see. He was all folded legs and arms curled to chest, chin tucked as though trying to occupy as little space as possible. 

Noting as much as he dipped out coffee grounds to prepare them a pair of mugs, Rogers revealed: "I, uh. I wasn't always like this, you know. I used to be about ninety-pounds soaking wet. Pretty sure there were stray cats bigger than me." 

Now  _that_  was an sight Bucky would've liked to see, but the novelty was short-lived when Rogers went on to say that he spent the brunt of his youth in and out of hospitals with everything from rheumatic fever to asthma attacks so severe, he would be winded for days. Bucky didn't much like to think about a thin-faced Rogers in any sort of medical setting, especially not hospitals— _especially not hospitals_ — as the thought of bird-bones too close to near-translucent skin was too much. Blue lips. Trembling limbs. A lack of lucidity in the eyes. Bucky was happy to take in the talk drink of water in his kitchen, healthy and pink with life. 

An important addition: 

It took all of twenty-four hours to find that Steven G. Rogers was stubborn as hell. 

Bucky, given the new occupant in his home and the urgent care he had to provide, had let his duties slip. He maintained the light house, itself, of course, as the cycling shaft of light cutting through the December fog never wavered through the night, but he had barely made a dent in the clean-up of the grounds. Tree limbs had been ripped from their maternal bodies and strewn wherever they saw fit, the boathouse had yet to be reorganized from the sharp gusts of disorderly wind, not to mention that one of the gutters around the back of the house had been damaged and started to leak. 

He began with the boathouse as that was the tallest mountain he'd have to tackle. Molly occasionally came in, nosing at the odd crate or tool, dropping her bear for him to toss her way and always staring expectantly (and pointedly) until Bucky obeyed her silent askance.

He was breaking on the boathouse, spine aching from stooping and lifting and rearranging, when he found Rogers gathering tree limbs at the front of the house. Rogers bent to pick up at least three or four before piling them into a small mountain of kindling and he pulled up short when he saw Bucky watching him. 

"What—," Bucky prompted sharply. "—are you  _doing_?" 

Rogers blinked. 

"Um. Helping?" 

The innocent— not an act, Bucky hadn't known Rogers for very long at all, but his face was too open to be deceptive— lilt in his voice was enough to have Bucky close the distance, hand wrapping around the pair of limbs in Roger's grasp. The other man did not let them go. 

"You ought to be inside. Resting." 

Lowly, leaving no room for argument: "I've rested enough." 

"You slept the hours right after I dragged you inside and then you got maybe another three, pal," he said, unimpressed. Bucky made room, all elbows and bite. "Give me the limbs, Rogers." 

"No." 

“No?"

Rogers lifted his brow in a clear approximation of  _did I stutter, Barnes_? And no, he hadn't. 

Softer, letting his hand drop to hang at his side, Bucky said: “I can manage the lawn care just fine. Will you please humor me by sitting down? You’re exhausting me just standing there.”

“No,” Rogers murmured, matching Bucky’s adjusted tone. The last hint of his bristling ebbed. “You saved my life—”

“—technically my little lady did that—”

“—and I intend to hold my keep around here while I stay with you. I’m no leech,” and there came that sharpness, that unnecessary determination. He was trying to prove himself, Bucky realized. Prove he wasn’t some lousy free-loaner taking up a free room and a second epiphany rapidly closed in on the first: Rogers was the type that even if he’d broken both his legs, he’d still try to stand, would do his best to help. Hell, Bucky spotted him eyeing the rake and the abundance of dead leaves that littered the yard as if the man hadn’t broken his dominant arm. Saw him look to the faded apple-green shutters that hadn’t been painted in as many years as Bucky had been alive.

Rogers had been a Captain, once. Bucky didn’t have any trouble seeing that, now.

“I know that,” was Bucky’s quiet assurance, delivered while moving the rake before the blond got any ideas. “You don’t have to tell me, Rogers.”

Rogers flicked his eyes to the gardening tool then up to Bucky’s face, a short huff shooting out his nose as he shook his head. He knew he’d been caught, shifting from foot to foot. He’d lost one of his shoes when he’d washed ashore and stood in an old pair of Bucky’s work boots, the laces frayed and the soles well-worn.

“You know you can call me Steve,” Rogers told him, giving him a passing squeeze on the shoulder. His bad shoulder, the one that gave way to an empty sleeve. Like it was _normal._ “Or is that too informal for… the Plaza?”

If the nearest tree wasn’t across the yard, Bucky would have let his head thunk into the wide belly. It didn’t stop him from tipping back his head and groaning, eyes to the sky as if the atmosphere had a chance of cracking open and giving him the answers to life’s pressing questions. “You’re not gonna let that one go, are you?”

“Nope,” Steve said, too damn chipper for his own good. He even popped the P of the word.

Bucky turned on his heal and the laughter died in Steve’s throat as quick as it had come. He’d gotten about a dozen paces from the other man when he turned, never pausing in step, to say: “You gonna help me with the busted gutter or what?”

Twigs crackled on impact with the earth, leaves whispering softly to one another. These sounds did nothing to mask the Steve’s footfalls moving rapidly forward to catch up and fall in on Bucky’s left. Molly appeared from where she’d been lounging, watching the proceedings with little interest until they started to move out of her sight.

She ran a circle around them, Molly nosed the bends of Ro— _Steve’s_ knees, urging him on.

Bucky only just kept from shooting her a betrayed look. _Little enabler._

Her tail kept wagging, seemingly oblivious, though Bucky was positive she knew exactly what she was doing.

*

See, the thing about having an unexpected arrival in a secluded region is that, well. It puts a damper on things.

Stark wasn’t due to arrive for another week and he would be coming with Bucky’s typical supplies— toiletries, the odd tool he needed, food. That last one was particularly vital, here. For, you know, obvious reasons.

To be frank, Steve ate every meal like he’d never seen food in his life. Bucky had no idea what kind of conditions the guy had grown up in, whether it was a learned instinct to take any sustenance and swallow it down as fast as possible out of fear it’d vanish if you waited long enough or if it had to do with the war. In the trenches, Bucky had generally been able to eat with little disturbance. It wasn’t like the stone-tough biscuits and cold, corned beef were five-star dining options, but you couldn’t afford to be picky, not when there was so little to go around, otherwise.

Not all war stories are universal.

The problem came with the fact that Bucky only had enough food for one man. Sure, he always got Stark to throw in a couple of extra goodies, but he and Steve were relatively large in size, both doing some sort of manual labor that required a high-calorie intake to keep their strength up.

On the third morning of him doing so, Steve caught Bucky giving little less than half of his rations up. He’d gone from fair to ruddy in a blink.

“You need to eat, too!” he protested.

“I’m not the one recovering, Steve,” Bucky said patiently, smothering a yawn into his knuckles. He shoveled eggs into his mouth automatically. “I’m not all that hungry anyway.”

This did not stop Steve from dumping three slices of bacon on Bucky’s plate, from tossing a piece of toast, already coated with the strawberry preserves Bucky liked so much, over, too.

Bucky smiled into his mug.

*

On their fifth night, as the hour was closer to four than three in the morning, Bucky came down the spiral staircase long enough to use the bathroom.Steve had stayed up with him until after one, but when the blond had started to nod off, Bucky convinced him to hit the sack, instead.

Molly had apparently joined him. She’d tucked herself in at the foot of the couch, head propped on the arm. This left Steve to pull up a chair and roll up a towel from the kitchen by means of a makeshift pillow, his legs propped up and sticking out from under his plaid blanket.

Bucky was no monster. He stepped up to adjust the throw, tucking it gingerly around Steve’s feet so they’d not get cold when the fire died down. Molly’s tail thumped as her eyes snapped open, big and brown and sleepy in her sweet face.

He pressed his fingers to his lips then touched his hand to her head, hushing her softly.

With a last look at Steve— fan of lashes along his cheekbones, a smatter of freckles one only noticed if they searched long and hard enough, stray locks of hair curled to his forehead— Bucky made to return to his post. He felt as if he had helium in his chest, felt light from it.

As the sun crested the horizon, winking its bronze eye open to illuminate the world,Bucky could have sworn Steve had been smiling. He hoped whatever dream played out behind his eyelids was a good one.

*

Another day, another talk. Bucky was getting quite used to the tenor of Steve’s voice. It’s richness, all its depths. If Bucky were being brutally honest, Steve could recite the most boring of grocery lists and Bucky would sit and listen as if he were among the audiences of the Globe.

It was a _problem_.

Bucky was not ready to look that problem in the face. He wasn’t entirely sure if he’d ever have the strength to do as much, if it would ever be safe.

“…you draw?”

Bucky gave a little jerk, righting his focus on Steve. The morning was young, still baby-pink and ripe for the picking and made for a lovely backdrop to walk along the shore. The sea murmured its greetings against the surf, pushing up the occasional broken shell fragment, opalescent punctuation marks at their feet.

“Nah,” he said. “I, um. I used to play the piano, but I never had much artistic ability.”

“Bucky,” Steve said, almost offended. “Playing the piano, creating music in and of itself, is an artistic ability.”

He had to tighten his jaw from making some dark remark about how _I’ll never play again so it doesn’t make much difference does it?_ because he had stayed up all-night and the stroll was meant to tire him out so he could go right back in the house and collapse until sundown.

Once, he could silence entire parlors filled with debutants as he filled the spaces with Debussy and Mozart, introducing his own compositions on occasion. His mother would always smile and sway, his father’s hand at her waist, tipping into her. And Becca— Becca would—

The stump of his arm itched, like the phantom flex of a muscle.

Bucky steamrolled on, clearing his throat: “Favorite color?”

“It changes,” Steve told him and Bucky, answering his own question, could only think _blue, blue, blue._

“What do you mean it changes?”

“It changes!” the other man laughed. “It all depends on my mood— say I’m happy then I tend to like oranges and yellows, the real bright ones. When I’m more than a little ankle-deep in melancholy, it’s blues and silvers and sometimes greens. The dull greens, like… like grass on a cloudy day or, ah, a dirty sweater.”

Because just being in Steve’s presence made him a little braver, Bucky said: “Well, I’ve always liked blue.”

“Why?”

They’d been asking each other such silly things all day— _if you could live anywhere, if you could eat anything forever, what book could you read over and over_ — and given how their dialogue had played out thus far, Bucky shouldn’t have been surprised. And yet here he was, tongue-tied over a single syllable.

“Do… can I be honest?” _Stop speaking. Now!_

Steve nodded, earnest as ever. “Of course.”

“I’ve always liked blue,” Bucky repeated _. Shut up. Shut up, shut up_ — “but, ah. Well. From an… artist’s point of view as you might say, I like the color of your eyes. When the, um. Sun—,” Bucky flapped his hand weakly, his cheeks and ears tingling as blood rushed to press against them. “—hits them.” Then, because his tongue had truly decided today was the day to run amuck, he added lamely: “S’like the ocean in the summer, when the sky’s clear.”

Steve ducked his head, the hand not bound in a makeshift cast rising to cup at the nape of his own neck. There was color in his cheeks. The sun slanted just right, as if Apollo recognized Steve as one of his own and wanted to ensure it was impossible for Bucky to miss how beautiful the man in his presence was.

And Bucky felt his body cavity warm when Steve tipped up his face to flash a smile.

Bucky’s heart stuttered, uttered, clear as day: _oh, no._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so my spring semester started this last week and I managed to pump this out. Ugh. My power. And because I'm feeling generous? Here's the chapter like... three days early lmao
> 
> Enjoy!


	4. delivery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Stark and his apprentice arrive with supplies on Violet Isle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! I hope everyone is doing well! 
> 
> Enjoy the update!

Bucky had noticed him staying awake later and later with each passing night, often blinking rapidly and giving languid stretches of his back to keep from falling asleep. It amused him, watching Steve smother yawns into the backs of his hands, swiping sleep from his eyes or even scrubbing his fingers over his eyelids as if that had any real effect other than flushing his skin. 

"Steve," Bucky laughed lowly. "Steve, what are you doing?" 

Two days before Tony Stark was meant to arrive with supplies, Steve pulled an all-nighter. Bucky was quite honestly surprised he hadn't tried to use toothpicks to keep his eyes open, but didn't voice the joke for fear Steve might attempt just that. 

"S'lonely during the night, isn't it?" 

_Not so much anymore. Not with you here._

(Bucky didn't think about how soon he would be gone, how the cold would rush in and reclaim all the bright places Steve had come to occupy in a matter of forty-eight hours.) 

"I suppose it can be," he said. "Though, I'm not lonely now." 

"Because I'm awake," Steve said, too damn matter-of-fact for a man who'd been active for the better part of a day. It was endearing.  _He_ was endearing, if mighty stubborn. "And it's nice, right?" 

Bucky's throat seized and he hoped, beyond the soft dregs of music floating out of the wireless across the space, Steve didn't hear the way his breath caught.  _Get yourself together, Barnes, Christ on a cracker._

"Yeah, Steve," he murmured as the sun mounted the horizon. "It is." 

*

Steve, Bucky was quick to find, happened to be a very tactile individual. 

If Bucky was already sitting, Steve would drop beside him, leaving little to no space between their thighs. He was prone to throwing his arm around Bucky's shoulders, to giving Bucky's hair a ruffle or brushing his hand over Bucky's back if they passed each other in the narrow hallway. A silent  _pardon_ _me_ that sent Bucky's heart racing like he'd run a mile each and every time. 

It was pathetic. Honestly, Bucky had become a laughing stock in the peanut gallery of his own mind. 

A newer development: Steve, so it seemed, quite liked when Bucky initiated contact of his own. 

A squeeze of the shoulder. Letting their hands settle close, too damn close. Occupying two couch cushions instead of sprawling out to occupy all three. 

Molly, of course, loved to be included in their closeness, climbing over and around and between them. She'd lick Bucky's cheek and, in a swift motion, would be dragging her quick tongue down the side of Steve's face before either of them knew what had hit them. And he was glad for it, in some ways. The shattering of the spell. A reminder that they could only get so close before, best case scenario, Steve punched him in the mouth and rid him of a few teeth for behaving in such a... socially taboo manner. 

He would take what he could get, hoard each touch like a dragon hunched over its precious gold and gems. 

They would surely become nothing more than sweet memories.

*

If he were being quite honest, it had slipped from the front of Bucky's mind that Steve happened to be an artist. Sure, they spoke of it and he even admitted he'd been painting when that faithful tempest struck, but Bucky had never seen him in action. Had never seen him in the throes of scribbling and erasing, drafting and creating. 

With the expression Steve made at the morning breeze's nudging of yesterday's meticulously raked leaves back across the grass, Bucky imagined he likely worked with a furrowed brow and firm mask of single-minded concentration. 

"How long will I have this cast on?" Steve prompted. He'd been trying to clutch at a nub of graphite for the better part of ten minutes and Bucky had tried (and failed) not to watch him. Steve's fingers were stiff, poking from the end of the makeshift casing from the second knuckle down. Bucky had scrounged up a bit of drafting paper, as the only other source was his logbook in the keeper's nest: what Steve had put on the page was nothing short of a jerky scribble, a child's work. 

Bucky knew without having seen as much, that Steve was capable of so much better, that his injury impeded him reaching that level of excellence. But it was temporary, the break. Steve would, at least, regain full use of his right arm in a way it was impossible for Bucky to do with his left. 

"Tell me?" 

Steve glanced his way, pausing in his effort to set his fresh, vacant sheet ablaze just by staring. "What?" 

Bucky extended his hand, giving his fingers a wriggle, nodding at the paper and graphite. "Tell me what you want to draw. Describe it to me?" 

A slow, sure smile dawned on Steve's face—sending Bucky's heart into palpitations, in the meantime. He passed the materials to Bucky, settling back in his seat and looking out the window from the floor of the light room. Beyond the glass, night had arrived and brought with it a diamond encrusted tapestry unfurled across the heavens. The beauty of the evening enhanced by it being a blessedly clear one, a full moon highlighting the crest of waves bone-white. 

"Whatever I want, huh?" 

Bucky smoothed his hand over the page, kicking his feet up for a better means of support. "That's what I said, pal." 

"The sand-dollar," Steve murmured, still smiling though it had softened at the edges as if it were a sharp stroke of charcoal, gently smudged. "The one we found on our walk this morning." 

That wasn't so bad. Just a circle, five elongated lines to represent the points of the almost-but-not-quite star design the waves had worn into the fragment. He had the little trinket settled on his bedside table next to his alarm clock. It would likely be the first thing he saw when he woke to begin his shift. Bucky, just for a bit of a flourish, smudged a real dark spot then smudged it with his thumb. The result was a seemingly out of place shadow, given the lack of an actual light source, though when Bucky held up the page for Steve's inspection, the man simply grinned. 

"The way you talked, I didn't think you could draw a circle." 

Bucky scoffed. "This is an oval at best." 

"Least it's not a square. Or a triangle." 

Bucky aimed a half-hearted kick at Steve's calf, grumbling playful nonsense when Steve easily dodged the blow. "Alright, wise-guy. What are you in the mood for now?" 

They cycled through a multitude of things. Flowers, stones, clouds. Objects with relatively simple shapes and concepts that even a novice of Bucky's level could get a decent result from his efforts. When Steve suggested Molly, though, Bucky had began to laugh before he'd laid down the first line. He was incapable of paying his little lady the tribute she deserved, making her legs too stumpy and her tail too long to match with the scale of the rest of her body. Not to mention he had both her eyes showing event though he'd technically sketched her in profile. 

Steve wheezed at the sight. 

"It— _ha_ — looks like a  _cave_ drawing." 

Bucky squinted, even dropped the graphite to his lap to pluck up and turn the paper at various angles. He turned the page upside down just to hear Steve snort. "How do you figure that?" 

"Early man would draw things like bison and rhinos deep, deep in caves in pitch darkness or maybe torch light. They'd, heh, paint the animals like you did poor Molly, here, and have both horns exposed or some particular identifier that says  _hey, this is, in fact, a bison._ No need to second guess, here." 

Bucky let the paper fall to his lap, barely biting down on a smile as he said, mock-offended: "You calling Molly a buffalo, Steve? 'Cause that's what I'm picking up from you." 

"No, no," the blond laughed, laughing all the harder when Molly's collar jangled as she trotted up the spiral stairs, head poking in through the doorway as she gave a high-pitched yawn. Bucky gave her back a brisk rub, felt her right side was still warm from laying wherever it is she'd been for the past few hours. "No, I'd not disrespect her like that." 

As though to accentuate the validity of this claim, Steve dipped in to kiss Molly's nose. Her tail wagged dangerously fast, generating its own breeze. 

"Alright, alright," Bucky huffed as Molly flopped down, _oof_ ing and looking between them with a quick flicker of her eyes. She lowered her head to her paws and succumbed to sleep once more in a matter of half a minute. "New subject before the madam's ego inflates further." 

Something... odd come over Steve's visage and he fixed Bucky with a look that was... tender. Too tender. It must be the lateness of the hour and the lack of rest he'd received to make him... Yes. Surely, that was it. 

(Despite such a clear-cut explanation, Bucky's hummingbird heart started up with its fluttering behind his breastbone.) 

"You." 

"Me?" 

"Yes," Steve said, nodding. "Draw yourself. I'll describe you as I see you, in terms of lines and shapes, and then you can piece them together." 

It was a daunting task and personal, too, not to mention a touch more introspective than Bucky was entirely comfortable with getting. But Steve was giving him the  _eyes,_ hell, Bucky'd seen nearly the exact same sort of silent pleading on Molly's face when he sat at the table having a pot roast while she bumped her snout into her own, far-less appetizing dish. 

"Okay," he murmured. 

The first go-round, Bucky didn't give Steve the time to take one of his features as the starting point, delving right in to making a flat, faceless stick-man with one arm, two legs, a stubby torso, and a lop-sided head. He drew a few strikes of dark hair to the point where the shoulders would be if he'd gone and filled them in, tilting the page for Steve's viewing. 

"Self-portrait by the author in graphite," Bucky joked. "They'll be auctioneers fist-fighting to get a Barnes original." 

Though Steve laughed, a sweet note, it was so easy to let insecurities reach and break the surface, to drip out his mouth _._ "Sometimes, I feel like this little guy, yanno? Small. Flat. Insignificant. I don't know it's... is that weird? It's got to be weird." 

Any traces of mirth had abandoned Steve, leaving him sober and... incredulous? 

"You're more than that," he said, the conviction in his voice surprising Bucky, admittedly, more than it ought to. "God, Buck, you're so..." 

He shifted in his seat, his legs falling to the floor with muffled thumps. There they sat, staring with parted mouths no more than five feet away from the other. The moment hung between them, delicate as gossamer and Bucky had seen waves less fragile, less fleeting, than this. He was scared to breathe out of fear he might disturb the instance and never find out the end to Steve's sentence.

"You're more complex than you give yourself credit for," Steve exhaled, breaking the lace and sending it fading as quick as it had fallen over them. Dust in the wind. "You are anything but a two-dimensional figure."

"Yeah, well," Bucky mumbled, tapping a digit over the figure's blank face. He, pointedly, did not think about the fact this was his companion's last night in the light nest, that they would not entertain such games between each other once the dawn arrived. "You ain't half bad, either, Steve.*

*

Morning came accompanied by Tony Stark's arrival on Violet Isle. He swanned in dressed in one of his perfectly tailored suits, the two topmost buttons undone at the base of his neck and he'd forgone any sort of tie or hat. Peter was with him, a bit bleary given the wee hour, but no less bright.

(The instant their ship had appeared on the horizon, slicing through the early morning fog, Bucky had felt he would be sick. If Steve hadn’t been settled in beside him, well. He’d spared a moment, drinking in the sight of his companion, the heat of him, the musk of his, the little noises he’d make when he shifted his weight through the night. His didn’t own a camera to capture any of it and prayed his mind would be enough to preserve it all.

Bucky had been naive. Stupidly, so. To have fallen into a false-sense of security, to truly believe that the bubble around Violet Isle could not be broken when bubbles were bred to be burst.)

Their vessel was too large to dock at the narrow pier on the north side of the island, some five hundred yards from the lighthouse, close enough that one had clear visibility from the front door. Peter and Tony had a long row-boat, though, loaded down with crates of supplies Bucky was quick in helping them unload.

"Um, Mr. Barnes?"

Bucky glanced Peter's way, the kid's hair windswept and wild atop his head. "What is it, kid?"

Peter flushed along the juts of his cheekbones, ducking his face sheepishly. "Where's your dog? I, ah, brought her a toy I wanted to give her."

The kid did as much every few months, twisting together thick scraps of fabric for a rope chew or the occasional baseball that Molly would leave teethmarks in, but never quite shred. Today, though, he pulled a white rabbit from the pack hanging off his right shoulder, its eyes made of black buttons and its nose a thickly stitched pink triangle.

Bucky couldn't help a grin, not when Peter was looking so embarrassed.

"I bet she'll love that,” he said, whistling out one high, long note. "Molly!"

She came barreling their way, from exactly where, Bucky had no idea, though she did run right up to Peter, who was quick to drop to his knees to accept her wet kisses all over his face. He burst with laughter as he scratched behind her ears. He'd pitched his voice high: “Oh, who’s a good girl? You! You are!”

“Don’t go stealing my little lady, Parker!”

Peter shot him a two-fingered salute, beaming at Molly when she took note of the bunny. She nosed at it, gave it a tug. “No promises, Mr. Barnes!”

Stark rolled his eyes, endlessly fond, in the general direction of his apprentice. He'd unloaded the last of the crates, checking a notepad to ensure everything was accounted for. “You know I only bring the kid because he likes the dog, right?”

Bucky was certain that wasn’t entirely true, but Peter shot Tony a grin over his shoulder and it was easy to see he wasn’t put out by this statement in the least.

"Admit it, Stark," Bucky smiled, stepping in to give the man's shoulder a thankful squeeze. "He's a good kid."

"Oh, I have no doubt about that," Tony was quick to say, going tender around the edges in a way Bucky'd only seen him around his wife, a particular paternal softness in his features. He made to reply in that quick-witted way of his, only to blink at Bucky, no, past him. “ _Steve_?”

The man of the moment gave a little wave, having just reached the bottom of the hill near the dock jutting out into the sea. “Tony.”

“What the— how did you—?”

Steve bumped their shoulders together as he fell in at Bucky's left, grinning all the wider when Bucky swayed in to bump him back. They spared no further pleasantries before relaying how Steve had washed up on the shore after the storm, the broken radio, the injury Steve had sustained in his arm.

“Well, be glad we have time to dump your ass on the mainland before we head out,” Tony quipped, as if Bucky’s body cavity wasn’t threatening to cave in on itself. As if the sun wasn’t dimming a little further with each passing breath. He would not imagine the color of Steve’s hair as he waved from the deck of Tony’s ship, moving further and further out of—

“Ah,” Steve shook his head— _he shook his head._ “I think I’m going to stay. There’s a lot of damage to the island, still, and you know what they say, right? Two heads better than one?”

“You’ve got two working arms between you, both. You sure that doesn’t make you two halves of a whole idiot?”

Steve slung his arm around Bucky’s neck, knocking their heads together and dislodging the wet breath of relief that had settled itself in Bucky’s throat. Tony rolled his eyes, having been in their company for all of two minutes and already seemingly exhausted by them. He even scooped up three crates, power-walking them up the slight incline toward the house.

“Suppose we should help him?” Steve jerked his head Tony’s way, teetering in the direction of the remaining crates.

And Bucky, barely acknowledging something so nonsensical in comparison to the whirlwind of thought shooting through his mind, because had to know—

He seized Steve’s sleeve and brought him to a stop, not quite aware of how close their faces were until he realized he could count every individual lash of Steve’s, could connect the freckles on his nose’s bridge into a star chart. Neither of them made a move to pull away. “Are… are you sure you want to stay?”

Steve tipped his face Bucky’s way. He was already nodding in the affirmative.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m sure.” Then, with only the smallest ounces of hesitation: “It… it would be okay, right? If I stayed? I… Oh, hell, I never even asked you if I—”

“No,” Bucky’s hand landed square of Steve’s chest over his sternum, felt the blond’s heart under his shirt, another borrowed one of Bucky’s that clutched at the lines of him too-tightly. Too temptingly. “I mean, yes. _Yes._ I’d. I’d like if you stayed very much.” 

“Good,” Steve murmured, too much and not enough and so fucking lovely Bucky was going to choke on it now that the chance of their remaining in close proximity at least until the next of Stark’s deliveries comes around. A new fear planted itself behind his ribs, waiting to be nourished, to spawn and grow like ivy around his intestines to smother him from the inside. “I’m glad for it, Buck.”

He could not figure out why Steve would... why he would chose... There was some clean-up to do, sure, but not enough to warrant two more weeks on Violet Isle. Not enough to decide to... No. No, he shoved all negativity away, burying with all the other dark shit he kept on lock and key, knowing how dangerous it would be to lift the lid on Pandora's box once he'd slammed it shut for the thousandth time. Steve was here, had picked the island instead of the life he had seven and a half miles northeast. A life, Bucky realized, he knew next to nothing about. 

He shut  _that_ down sharply, too. 

While he could, for as long as he could manage, Bucky would take what he could get and clutch it close with both hands. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Steve's staying... I wonder why THAT is, hmm? Also, after the far from home trailer, I couldn't NOT include Peter being wholesome af in this chapter. Comment to let me know what you think so far! See ya'll soon! Mwah, x!


	5. the shallows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a baby time jump (of about three weeks), we see how things are progressing on Violet Isle, which includes: a Christmas snapshot, a joke, and a birthday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

_1923._

 

The new year came and went quick as anything. Tony had brought them a blue spruce for Christmas and they made paper chains and Bucky managed to make a lumpy ball of tin-foil into an awkward replacement for an angel topper. 

Steve had cracked up at the sight of it, the faceless hunk of silver, but he'd smiled, too, and Bucky's chest warmed. 

"This," he announced, watching Molly approach the tree to give the limbs a sniff, "Is the shittiest Christmas tree I've ever seen." 

"S'not," Steve protested, tilting his head and squinting. "Looks good like this." 

"Steve, your eyes are closed." 

"As I said," the other man grinned, flicking open one eye to shoot Bucky a side-long glance. "Looks good." 

They ate dinner as normal, didn't even think of contacting Stark to take them to the mainland for the Church services, nor did they get one another anything. Steve did the dishes and Bucky gave him one of his blankets without prompting when Steve's toes looked a little too blue for Bucky's liking. They listened to the wireless radio and watching snow drift from the heavens like falling stars melting into the sea from the light keeper's roost. Being in one another's company was more than plenty, a better gift than anything that could be purchased or made. 

It was the best Christmas Bucky'd had since he was a child. 

*

Three weeks passed, business as normal. Sleep during the day (in separate rooms, so close, but so far), spend the evening hours as a couple of vigilant gargoyles guarding the rocky shores around Violet Isle with "lunch" after two and "dinner" around eight right before they retired to bed, but without taking care of a chore or six that needed to be completed. 

Stark and his apprentice came back a second time, a third. Each time he came bearing double the supplies and extended an invitation to serve as a vessel off the isle. 

Steve remained. 

Bucky's hope sparked and reared and played its hand at becoming a wildfire. 

*

It was bound to happen eventually, Steve asking about the arm. Or, more precisely, Bucky's lack of a left one. 

They were down by the shoreline on the opposing side of the island in which Steve had washed up on, bellies full from their last meal prior to their sunrise bedtime. Morning walks had become a daily routine, one Bucky was not adverse to in the slightest. They took advantage of the surface tension to see who could skip their flat stones the most frequently before the rocks _bloop_ ed out of sight. The first handful of throws, Bucky made it four and five times, Steve twice.

Molly had found a lovely tree limb she was carrying out the side of her mouth. She, too, was enjoying the brisk dawn. He shot a smile at her, huffing when she bit at a leaf and crunched it audibly between her teeth, going in for another before she'd even swallowed. 

"Don't you eat that," Bucky called out to her. 

Her tail thumped, acknowledging, and he was ignored. 

"Sticks and that kind of stuff won't hurt her, right?" Steve asked, an underlying note of anxiety threading his voice. A month of Molly sleeping beside him at night, trailing after him, nosing the bends of his knees in the kitchen as she begged for scraps had made Steve quite fond of her. Bucky would even wager that his little lady had Steve fully wrapped around her metaphorical fingers. Paws. Semantics, right?

"Shouldn't," Bucky replied, stooping for a brown rock between his feet. He tossed it up into the air once, watched it land in his palm. A quick whip of his arm sent the pebble flying across the water, making six happy skips. 

Steve's next pitch made four. 

"Can I ask you something?" 

Bucky hummed, noncommittally, bumping the toe of his shoe into Steve's to encourage him on.

"It's... it's a pretty personal question," Steve said and his gaze drifted from the remaining ripples of impact from his and Bucky's rocks to land on Bucky's face. Then, pointedly, he glanced down to the free-hanging jacket sleeve, vacant of bone and sinew and tissue, of warmth. Filled with nothing but the chilly breeze and brine rolling off the water. 

"You can ask, you know," Bucky murmured, and he didn't worry. Not really. Steve hadn't shown any signs of disgust, hadn't shied away from touching that part of Bucky— if he were honest, he was rather surprised the topic hadn't been breached sooner. 

"How...?" The unfinished  _did it happen_ sounded clear as if Steve had voiced it aloud. The pink in his cheeks implied that he didn't want to press, that he was sheepish for pressing, and would swallow down any further inquiries if Bucky wasn't comfortable answering him. 

"Shark attack," Bucky dead-panned, unable to help himself. 

Steve's eyes bulged and his posture straightened considerably. "Oh, Buck, I—"

"Christ," he wheezed, hand curving to his abdomen as he laughed hard enough to send a lung bursting. "Oh, oh my god. Steve, your face!" 

Clarity dawned on his companion, a realization that Bucky had been yanking his chain. Bucky should have expected it when Steve bent sharply at the middle and seized a handful of wet sand, chucking it right at Bucky'd midsection. 

"I genuinely thought you'd lost your arm to a great white,  _asshole_!" 

Bucky laughed all the harder, swiping the grit from his front. "Oh, I'm sorry. Steve, I— please don't feel bad. It's just, if I can't joke about it, well. There's not much else I really can do," with one last chuckle, his mirth was stamped away, leaving him sober and heavy. "In all seriousness, though, I, uh. I lost it in the war." 

Steve frowned, hand unconsciously drifting up to his neck to fiddle with the chain of his dog tags. "You, ah. You didn't tell me you served." 

"Sergeant James Barnes, at your service, Captain," he tipped his head as if he wore an invisible cap, the words grating on his throat despite their sarcastic bite. "And you're right. I don't... talk about it. Any medals I have, my dog tags, too. My uniform. I packed it all up and I keep them out of sight. It's easier, like that." Easier to pretend he didn't spend a year of his life in the mud of the trenches, that he didn't learn to sleep through machine-gun fire, that he didn't wake to men weeping softly for home and their mothers and the sweethearts they left back across the Atlantic. That he hadn't seen too much blood and too much gore and heard enough screams and cries of pain to last him a lifetime and then some. 

"Was it a bullet?" 

"Ah, no," Bucky said, shaking his head. "No. Real early on a foggy morning, a Kraut managed to crawl close enough to lob a grenade our way. No one saw it until after it was over. Killed four, took my arm. Left my friend Clint deaf in one ear." 

It had happened so fast, even now, in hindsight, the moment remained a blur of white-hot pain, a burst of dirt and body parts, humans— men Bucky had come to know and admire for their courage, had come to relate to in their mutual exhaustion over the useless length of the war— blown to pieces. 

"Would you hit me if I said, I'm so sorry?" Steve asked real softly, probing. Like Bucky really  _would_ slug him for showing sympathy. 

He might have done as much right out the war, but not today. Not to Steve. 

"No," Bucky assured him. "No, I wouldn't." 

It had taken him the better part of a year to relearn basic tasks. The first time he tried to chop a tomato, he'd sent the red sphere flying off the counter. He contemplated going around barefoot when confronted with the laces of his boots, but he managed to get the motions down quick enough. He had to change the way he walked, too, given that he unconsciously shifted his weight to his left side, often throwing himself off-balance if he wasn't ginger enough. 

The clearest memory was him walking along the street and seeing a couple kids playing baseball. Bucky'd seen the ball coming right for him and instead of reaching with his right hand, he'd gone with the ghost of his left and ended up getting nailed right in the cheekbone. God, the black eye he'd sported had stung like hell and the kids were apologetic as all get out, like it was remotely their fault he'd forgotten he lacked a fucking arm.

With time, though, the dexterity in his right hand improved greatly. Great enough that he didn't repress the urge to reach out and give the bend of Steve's good arm a squeeze. He'd be ready to come out of his cast in a few days, would be able to resume his life as an abled-bodied two-armed man, would be able to show off the drawing talent Bucky was sure he possessed. The thought of what Steve had the power to create had a reflexive little smile ticking up the corners of his mouth. 

"For what it's worth," Steve licked his lips, eyes back on the sea. "I'm glad we both made it out of the war alive. That our paths stumbled together." 

Bucky's heart thudded, pleased. "Me, too, pal. Christ, me too." 

*

Bucky scribbled down the temperature, had logged the two ships that passed, only to glance at the corner at the date in his logbook. _January 20th._ He closed the book with numbed fingers, sinking into his seat on useless legs and stared blankly out into the unfocused void, trying and failing to figure out how he might have let such a monumental thing slip by.

He'd forgotten Rebecca's birthday.

He had never let her birthday slip like that. Not in life. Not… not in…

He clenched his eyes closed, his breathing too loud and too unsteady even for his own ears. Steve was traipsing back up the spiral staircase, pushing into the suddenly too-small space with two mugs carefully gripped in his left hand.

“Black with two sugars, just how you like it,” Steve murmured, only to get a good look at Bucky’s face and still, mid-pass. “Buck? What is it?”

He couldn’t get the words out. Not at all. Not at first.

“I—,” Bucky choked, his tongue trying to glue itself to the roof of his mouth so he’d be incapable of admitting his error, his sin, aloud. “It’s January twentieth.”

Steve didn’t react, didn’t so much as nod or say _yeah, pal, that’s what happens— time keeps moving, days keep changing._ He wasn’t so obtuse as to not be aware something was greatly affecting Bucky. Would it have been too much to wish Steve could read his mind, right then? For Steve to just swim between the hemispheres of Bucky’s brain and pluck this piece of information out so he didn’t have to burn his tongue pitching it into the open air?

“Today’s Becca’s birthday.”

His companion’s head cocked near-imperceptibly, a silent question given Bucky had never uttered the name aloud in his company.

“Who’s ‘Becca', Buck?” Steve gently weeded, depositing the coffees on the closest flat surface to kneel worriedly on Bucky’s right. There was something that he couldn’t read in Steve’s expression, like a door previously flung open had been pushed shut.

“My sister,” he croaked, unable to take in the brightness of Steve’s face, the earnestness in it. God, the pair of them cared too damn much, over-flowed with all their emotion, and Bucky was threatening to drown in it all, had not decided, yet, between sinking and swimming. Those two words broke the damn, sent him spewing his deepest hurt out in the open for Steve: “Rebecca. She’d be sixteen. She got real sick just… just a few months after I got back to the States. One day she was running around laughing and playing with her friends and within a week, she was dying in this… this cold hospital. All white. Stung your eyes to look at anything for too long. She was a tiny little thing to begin with, but by the time the influenza took her, there was nothing left.

“She was just a baby— just eleven years old. God above, I think about all the shit she never got to do, the books she never got to read. All the songs, the places. I think about how much Molly would adore her. I think about all the letters I never got to write her and all the things I never got to tell her— I was a shell after the war. I’d… I scared her, I think, the way I just sank into myself and she tried so goddamn hard to pull me out my pit and she did. Christ, she did. She’d come to my room and just sit on the edge of my bed and read to me for hours until her voice gave out. She’d drag me by the hand downstairs and fix the worst meals— she couldn’t boil water without burning it— but I’d eat them for her. The day I lost her, I fell deeper than I ever did before and now, after all that, after all she did for me, I went and forgot—”

“No,” Steve said, shaking his head. “Buck, no.”

“Shut up,” Bucky snapped, immediately feeling guilty for the sharpness of his tongue.

“She wouldn’t blame you for it,” he pressed, so tender. Too tender. The softness caused more of an ache in Bucky’s lungs than if Steve had told him to suck it up and stop speaking.

“You don’t know a—”

“The girl you described to me seems to be kind, patient, and understanding— you hear that? Understanding, Buck. She’d not hold it against you.”

Bucky mopped at his leaking nose with his sleeve, pressing the heal of his hand into his left then his right eye and coming away with tears seeping into his skin. “I know she wouldn’t,” he whispered. “She was too sweet for that, but it feels like a betrayal to her memory. Letting something like her birthday pass me by.”

Steve was quiet for a moment, ducking his head so that golden hair of his flopped across his forehead, almost into his eyes. They breathed together in the silence, Bucky trying to match his labored pants to the steady in-out-in of Steve’s. He hadn’t even realized his eyelids lowered and closed, not until a hand reached out and covered his— it was the fatigue that kept him from jerking.

(It was affection that let his thumb brush along the side of Steve’s knuckles.)

“My, ah. My Ma died of tuberculosis,” Steve admitted quietly, the revelation bursting forth to kick Bucky in the gut, leaving him breathless and even more pained. “I’d been back stateside for about a year, had dinner with her every Sunday no matter how lousy I felt and one Sunday when I dropped in, she looked like hell. I insisted she go to the doctor— she was a nurse, said she would be fine, but before the next Sunday had come around, well.

“It’d always been just her and I. My Da died when I was a baby and it… it took me well over a year to even admit that she was gone. If someone asked about her, I’d tell them she was doing fine, that she’d been working too hard and they’d laugh and say they understood, but each time, they’d walk away with my lie. They’d leave me with this awful taste in my mouth and I couldn’t correct myself because it hurt so damn bad.

“So, in a way,” Steve said, giving Bucky’s fingers a squeeze. “I understand.”

Bucky’s tongue darted out to dampen the dry seam of his lips. He wanted to press his forehead to Steve’s, to slip out of his seat and onto his lap, to hold and be held by him and settled for remaining in place. For clutching Steve’s hand all the closer.

“What was her name? Your Ma’s?”

“Sarah.”

“Sarah,” Bucky echoed, nodding. “Lovely name. Real, real lovely.”

“And Rebecca,” Steve said. “S’real lyrical. Sweet.”

He wanted to bring Steve’s hand to his mouth, lean in and kiss his knuckles, the back of his hand. Bucky did neither. Bucky couldn’t find the strength to move.

The sky showed the first signs of the oncoming dawn when Steve pushed up and onto his feet, dusting off his backside and down the backs of his pants. Their coffee had gone cold and runny, untouched and out of either of their reaches from their posts. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“I’m gonna head downstairs for a bit. I’ll be back soon, alright?”

 _Don’t leave,_ Bucky wanted to beg, felt the plea press against the backs of his teeth like another layer of enamel. _Please don’t leave me._

“Okay,” he mumbled, dipping his head in a nod. He didn’t watch Steve leave, though he was fairly certain that Steve paused for a lengthy beat before descending the stairs.

It took the better part of an hour— sixty minutes of sitting in the muck and sorrow of his own head, of mopping up the traitor tears the leaked from his eyes, incapable of being stoppered— when Steve returned. He came to Bucky with a tiny newspaper vessel, small enough that it fit in his cupped palms. He’d gone and gathered a fistful of white flowers, long-stemmed things with three petals drooping out of their faces. Snowdrops, he believed they were named. A cluster of them grew not ten yards from the front door.

"It's no message in a bottle," Steve said quietly, shuffling nervously from foot to foot as Bucky stared and stared and _stared_. "But, um. I feel your sister would find this no matter where she may be."

Bucky surged in so fast, he nearly knocked the paper boat out of Steve's hands. He embraced the man tightly, too tight, a half-sob, half-delirious laugh welled up and out of him, making for quite the pathetic croak of sound.

“I’ve got you,” Steve murmured into the side of his head, a soft, soft mantra that kept Bucky’s knees from giving out. His warm palms skimmed up and down the line of Bucky’s back, petting and comforting and keeping his head above the water all in equal measures. “S’okay. I’ve got you, Buck.”

When he was relatively sure it was light enough that only one with the poorest of eyesight would run their ship into the rocky shores, Bucky took the little vessel outside, walked down dock with Steve in-step at his side. They bundled up against the cold, at least ten degrees lower than the previous handful of days, though no less clear of a dawn.

He held the ship, tracing the newsprint and coming away with smudges of black left behind on his skin. _Becca, sweetheart, I wish you could be here, but since you’re not, I’m sending you these flowers. I know they’re not roses, not your favorite, but those aren’t in season. Too cold for them. I hope you know I love you. That I miss you every single day. It’ll be a real long time before we see each other again, but keep the light on for me, alright? I’ll be there someday._

He could have sworn a small hand was brushing his side and he hiccuped a cry only to look and find Molly had joined them. She’d bumped the soft dome of her head into his thigh.

Bucky had to get on his hands and knees to properly deposit the carefully folded ship into the water, and itdid not move for a beat, only for a zephyr to whisper through the trees at his flanks, its soothing breath urging Steve’s creation, his gift that thawed a frozen part of Bucky he hadn’t realized needed tending, out of reach.

Tears came again. Stronger, this time. He didn’t expend the energy to wipe them away, not when the winter air was quick to freeze them on his cheeks. Steve helped him stand, leaving a very narrow margin of space between their bodies, the gap closing even further when Steve’s arm slid around his shoulders, tugging him in to lean against his side as they watched the tiny ship get swallowed up by the rich pigments of the rising sun.

Bucky closed his eyes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the kindness you've given this story so far! Please keep commenting and leaving kudos! It means the absolute world to me! See ya'll next week!

**Author's Note:**

> Life's come at me super fast these last couple of months (college, work, TA'ing, etc) and I took my winter break quite seriously aka I relaxed and just Treated Myself. I'm taking a lighter course load this semester with the hopes I'll have more time to write here as well as work on my novel, of which I'm in the editing stages. 
> 
> Please kudo and comment and subscribe if you feel this work is something I should continue with! Mwah, x!


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